Perry Visits the ACA Gallery

Visit to Atlanta College of Art Gallery

I used the extra time from our trip to the High Museum to visit the gallery at the Atlanta College of Art. The current show on display was the work of Joe Sola, an artist from California. Sola had several recent works from the past year, and some from previous years in this show. My favorite work of his was a performance piece titled “Studio Visit” which was a videotaped set of studio visits in which he asks the visitor if they would like to see a new piece he is working one, and when they say yes, he runs and jumps out of the window. I thought this was very funny; not only to watch the reactions of his visitors, but just the action of jumping out the window, completely unexpected was hysterical to me. Sola, of course, was completely safe when doing this performance. He landed on a soft spot outside. However, to the viewer/visitor, it appeared he had leaped to his doom.
Joe Sola had other pieces on display—the main one was an installation piece which was created live on opening night by five runway models from Atlanta. It looked like an assemblage of crap to me, but being a performance piece, I am sure it was entertaining to see live. His monochromatic watercolor series on display dealt with several coming-of-age movies in which he had taken a key scene and removed all of the people from the scene. The concept was nice, but his technical ability was lacking and the execution of the concept was not done well. I did not have time to view the other video performance at this exhibition titled “Saint Henry Composition,” in which he has an Ohio football team tackle and pummel him for three days.
As always, the ACA Gallery was in good shape. The show was different, and that was a good thing. Where else can you go and see an artist jump out of the window?
More about the artist Joe Sola: Joe Sola's Official home page